Are your deadlines tight for that presentation or report and you have no real content? Why worry when it's perfectly possible to hide behind completely meaningless (but nevertheless credible sounding) business school/public sector/socio/PC/techno/HR jargon? Perhaps you need something like:"The Asynchronous Alphanumeric Server concept is nothing but hot air." A thousand years ago, when I was selling big ticket computer systems for IBM, Honeywell published a 'Buzzword Generator' that for a few months dominated what was the steam-age version of the internet. In fact, their buzzword generator was an absolute pinch from an article by a 63 year old American public health worker called Philip Broughton. It was entitled How to Win at Wordsmanship. It used a matrix of three columns of words to generate very convincing gobbledygook. By taking any word from column A, adding it to any word in column B along with another in column C, a new credible acronym would be generated.

Propose "compatible transitional capability" to achieve "integrated transitional mobility" and your boss will probably promote you!The Buzzword Generator has certainly stood the test of time. Even after more than a third of a century, phrases like 'integrated logic-based capability', still have a certain cachet.

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Try searching the internet for 'Buzzword Generator' and you will find lots of variations on the theme - everything from HR buzzwords to Business School thesis aphorisms.Honeywell, the American computer firm, have just devised as an awful warning, what they call a 'jargon kit'. It's based they say, on the Simplified Modular Prose Writing System - SIMP for short - and using it anyone able to count up to ten can write 40,000 well balanced, impressive and quite meaningless sentences.I must thank Peter Green of eVision Services for sending me this:think simplyAnother update - John Laban has contacted me to say that Honeywell SIMP has been around for 30, possibly 40 years. Just goes to prove that a good, fun ideal has long legs.Thanks John.